Ningura Napurrula

Ningura was born circa 1938 at Watulka, south Kiwirrkura, in Western Australia and is a Pintupi artrist. She married Yala Yala Gibbs Tjungurrayi and, in the 1960's, together with their young son Maurice, endured on a journey to Yininti. Wili, Illpili, Wirrinpili and finally arriving in Papunya. Yala Yala was one of the original artists who started the Papunya Tula Art movement in the early 1970's, he has painted many masterpieces and on some occasion Ningura was apprenticed by Yala Yala and allowed to dot in the background.

Ningura observed the artists in Papunya work on large paintings and listened to them discussing the importance of the story layout. In the early 1990's Ningura started painting her own paintings, remembering the teaching of the old men and the importance of the layout of the story. Ningura paints the mythological events of her Ancestors. As she paints Ningura will sing the songs for that story, her paintings are focused and depict the travels of her Ancestors and the sacred sites in her country.

In 1996 she was part of a group of elderly women from Kintore and Kiwirrkura who began painting for Papunya Tula Artists in their own right. Characteristic of her work is a strong dynamism and rich linear design-compositions created with heavy layers of acrylic paint.

She participated in an initial Papunya Tula Artists exhibition in 1996 and featured in several group shows in Sydney, Melbourne and Darwin in 1999. She had her first solo exhibition with William Mora Aboriginal Art in 2000, and participated in the impressive Kintore Women's Painting for the Papunya Tula retrospective at the Art Gallery of NSW.

Ningura Napurrula has exhibited extensively within Australia and internationally including in Aborigena at the Palazzo Bricherasio, Turin, Italy (2001); Australian Contemporary Aboriginal Art in Prague, Toskansky Place, Prague, Czech Republic (2003); and Masterpieces from the Western Desert, Gavin Graham Gallery, London, United Kingdom (2003). Her work is represented in the following Collections: the Australian Institute for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, Canberra; the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, Darwin; the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; and the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney.

More recently, Ningura Napurrula has had her secret women's story repainted on to the first floor ceiling of the new Musee du Quai Branly in Paris, which opened in 2006.